Abstract
Abstract The Desert Fireball Network observed a significant outburst of fireballs belonging to the Southern Taurid Complex of meteor showers between 2015 October 27 and November 17. At the same time, the Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance project detected a distinct population of smaller meteors belonging to the irregular IAU shower #628, the s-Taurids. While this returning outburst was predicted and observed in previous work, the reason for this stream is not yet understood. 2015 was the first year that the stream was precisely observed, providing an opportunity to better understand its nature. We analyze the orbital elements of stream members and establish a size–frequency distribution from millimeter to meter size range. The stream is highly stratified with a large change of entry speed along Earth’s orbit. We confirm that the meteoroids have orbital periods near the 7:2 mean motion resonance with Jupiter. The mass distribution of this population is dominated by larger meteoroids, unlike that for the regular Southern Taurid shower. The distribution index is consistent with a gentle collisional fragmentation of weak material. A population of meter-sized objects is identified from satellite observations at a rate consistent with a continuation of the size–frequency distribution established at centimeter size. The observed change of longitude of perihelion among the s-Taurids points to recent (a few centuries ago) activity from fragmentation involving surviving asteroid 2015 TX24. This supports a model for the Taurid Complex showers that involves an ongoing fragmentation cascade of comet 2P/Encke siblings following a breakup some 20,000 yr ago.
Highlights
The Southern and Northern Taurid showers are part of a Taurid Complex of meteor showers with daytime and nighttime components, the night-time showers of which spread from September to December along Earth’s path (Jenniskens 2006; Brown et al 2013). Whipple (1940) first identified comet 2P/Encke as the likely parent body
With an eye on the upcoming 2022 return of the s-Taurids, we present in this paper observations of the enhanced 2015 Taurid fireball activity as observed by the Desert Fireball Network (DFN) in Australia and by the Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) network in California
The CAMS-derived Southern Taurid Complex orbits were released as part of the 2013 – 2016 CAMS data release and can be accessed via the project website and via the Meteor Data Center
Summary
The Southern and Northern Taurid showers are part of a Taurid Complex of meteor showers with daytime and nighttime components, the night-time showers of which spread from September to December along Earth’s path (Jenniskens 2006; Brown et al 2013). Whipple (1940) first identified comet 2P/Encke as the likely parent body. Whipple (1940) first identified comet 2P/Encke as the likely parent body. The comet has evolved to a phase in the rotation of the nodal line that keeps its nodes far from Earth. This Jupiter family comet moves in a short 3.3-year orbit that is decoupled from Jupiter, which makes both the comet and meteoroid orbits relatively stable for long periods of time. Jenniskens (2006) pointed out that these early proposed parent bodies appeared to be S- or O-class stony asteroids, instead, which evolved into Encke-like orbits from a source in the asteroid belt via the ν6 resonance. The same conclusion was reached more recently by Popescu et al (2014) and Tubiana et al (2015)
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